 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. Yes, we are a webinar. You can call us that. We won't be too offended by it. That we do here out of the library, the Nebraska Library Commission, every week. The show is free and open to anyone to watch. We do it live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time. Last for about an hour, give or take. The sessions are recorded every week, so if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. All of our recordings are available on our website in the archives section, so you can see all of our... We're in the very beginning now of our sixth year, so we've got five years worth of recordings out there that you can watch if you want to go and see all the things that have been on the show before. We do a mixture of things. There are presentations, mini-training sessions, book reviews, anything related to libraries. We are happy to have it on the show. We have commission staff, Nebraska Library Commission staff that do sessions sometimes, and we bring in guest speakers sometimes. This week, we have to have a mixture of that, as we do often. Next sitting next to me is Katherine Brockmeyer, who is our grant program manager for the 21st century librarian program that we have here at the Nebraska Library Commission that we've had for quite a few years. I'm not sure how many years. Well, the first round was in 2004, and then we had a short break from 2008 and 2009, and then we started up again in 2010. I've been doing it for a long time. She runs this grant program for us, and she's got some of the people on with us this morning that have been participating in the grant program. They're going to share how it went for them, so I'll just hand over to you to introduce who's up and what they're going to be talking about. Great. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. As Christa said, my name is Katherine Brockmeyer. I work here at the Nebraska Library Commission, and I work with the 21st century librarian grant that's provided to the Nebraska Library Commission from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. We received the grant in 2010, and annually have been able to provide grants to public libraries for them to provide internships. There are two reasons why we are having this webinar today. One is to share stories from the previous grant year and also then to describe this year's grant program and the steps to apply because the application deadline is coming up here in February, and we'll get to the specifics of that in just a moment. Today we have with us Evelyn Oost from Rock County Public Library, and with her is her intern, Cerise Clay, and they will be sharing their experiences, and then if possible, we have a couple of other internship supervisors who are logged in today, and if we're able to get some feedback from them, we'll share that as well. So that's the first part of the show, and then the second part of the show will be the introduction to the application process and a formal introduction to the internship program. So we'll turn it over to Evelyn and Cerise. You guys are muted, so you can go ahead and I'll moderate with a few questions, and we're going to start with Cerise because she has to get back to class. She's so kindly taken out time from her day to join us. Thanks for joining us, Cerise. I didn't quite hear you. There we go. You may need to speak up just a little bit more, bring the microphone closer to you. Otherwise, the people who are logged in may need to turn their speakers up a little bit. So now I can hear you just fine. We're just going to ask you a few questions today about your experience working as an intern. First of all, how did you hear about the internship program and why did you decide to apply? They send out a lot of flyers, especially up to the high school looking for people that might be interested. And the reason that I applied is to develop more social skills because my previous jobs didn't really involve a whole lot of interaction with others. And also with being a senior, everyone always is giving me advice for how to make college easier. And some of the advice I receive is to know how to use a library. So I figured if I started with my hometown library, then when I get to college, it won't be as scary. Super. Now not to put you too much on the spot, but did you have a library card before you applied for the position? Yes, I did. And had you used the library very much or maybe your school library? Yeah, when I was in grade school, after school, we would, myself and my sister would come up to the library and we'd hang out and read books until my mom got off work. So the faces at the library were familiar to you? Yes. Great, great. Well, what did you think you'd be getting yourself into when you first, when you got hired? When I first applied, I thought it'd just be like shelving books and checking people out and helping them find a few books that they were looking for. Okay, and then go ahead. After I started, I realized that a librarian's job is a lot more than that. They're a service to the community and they help with like research papers and entertaining and they're a quiet spot to study. So you saw what goes on behind the scenes and then you also saw the bigger picture, the bigger role that the library plays in the community? Yes. Okay, great. What we'd really like to hear from you today is the exciting projects that you worked on this summer and then also if you can talk about what's happened to those projects since your internship ended. Okay, well, during my internship, I watched some webinars and I liked seeing what other people had done at their libraries and then using those ideas and trying to get them started in our community like the story walk and over like the Christmas break, we put up the 12 days of Christmas and the local businesses around town and had kids and their parents. We encouraged them to walk around and read this story. Right, that story project's pretty interesting just to give a little bit of background information on it. What happens is you take apart the book and you post the pages around town or along a trail or that sort of thing and people follow the story by following the path. Is that right? Yes. Great and did you hear anything about that from anybody from the kids or the business owners? Have you heard any kind of feedback? Yeah, there was 27 kids that completed the story walk and from their parents that came into the library while I was working one day, I heard that they said it was a great idea and they really enjoyed walking and reading the story with their children. Oh, that's great. That's great to get that feedback. Doesn't that feel good to know that something you did had an impact? Yes. Yeah, that's really super and that's really neat. I think the webinar that you may have watched was probably one of ours. It was probably an Encompass Live recorded webinar about the story walk probably that happened in Hastings. Yeah, we did have Jake Gunn from Hastings Public Library about their story walk. So kudos to Evelyn for helping you find a project and of course using our resources to get some information. Let's see. Now, since you had your internship, you mentioned that you were working at the desk and you talked to some parents, so does that mean that you've been employed at the library since you've completed your internship? I came in and filled in for Evie one day. Wow. I'm having my Christmas break. Amazing. That is super. How'd that make you feel? I felt like I was about ready to graduate high school and have to find a job and interact in the real world. Right. Yeah, that's definitely a mature sort of activity to do, especially if you were there taking care of the place by yourself and overseeing everything that was going on. I want to go back to one thing that I appear on this picture that's up on the webinar screen. You can see you with a couple of staff from the North Fork Public Library. Can you tell us a little bit about your field trip? We took a field trip to North Fork to look at their library because we're just a small town library and we just went and visited and saw what a bigger library contains and how many more staff they have to help them. Right. That's a huge surprise, right? Yeah. And then you see that they specialize in different areas, whereas probably, as you noticed in a small town library, that the staff have to do so many different things. They have to do more of the things that would be specialized in a larger library. Yes. Right. Okay. Evelyn, while we still have Cerise, is there any kind of feedback that you would like to provide or any insight that you'd like to say about Cerise that she could respond to or anything? Well, when she worked here over Christmas, a little boy came in and I thought it was kind of a cute story. I wasn't here, so I didn't hear it, but I thought maybe she'd like to share that with you, the comments she made. The little boy walked in through the doorway and he looked at me and then Becky was here helping me get started and then he's like, you look nice. Are you old enough to run the library? That's great. That's great. And you were. You were old enough to run the library. You'd had all that experience from this summer and orientation to all the different things that go on. Evelyn felt that you were well-equipped and prepared to work at the library on your own. That's pretty funny. Evelyn, any other reflections you'd like to give on your experience with Cerise? It was just, we've done this for several years and we just feel like the internship is a great asset to our community and to our library and it gives the students an opportunity to work in a professional setting that they normally probably wouldn't have in our small rural community. We put the interns through a process when we hire them just like we would any other job. They are interviewed and they have to fill out a resume and then they go through that process and then they're hired. We actually just hired a new director and we kind of used a lot of the same questions that we asked the director with our interns. Of course, we revised them a little but it's put them. Cerise said that I asked her if that was uncomfortable for her too difficult and she said no. She felt it was relaxing more than she thought it would be. Our board usually interviews two of our board members and one staff person and our assistant director went through the interview process this year so it's not all on my shoulders that way. Absolutely and it's a good experience I think for interns to have a job interview and to complete an application and maybe they've never created a resume or a curriculum beat up before. Right and I just wanted to say I feel like the grant writing process is easy and it's the reporting is not difficult so that's kind of a plus when everyone's so busy. I really appreciate that. It's fairly easy to get handled and we have our interns fill out a time sheet at the end of the day each day and they record what they kind of did so at the end of the time we kind of know what they completed and everything you can refer back to that time sheet. That works for a well-forced. Right so it sounds like the administration for you of course you're old this is old hat for you now after several years but you know we do try to streamline the process for you and ask you to do some things along the way so that the reporting at the end is not too burdensome. Thank you. Thank you and I think it's important too in our small rural community for other students to see someone young working in the library. Their high school librarian is probably near retirement and I'm retiring and and their assistant director is you know not exactly young either anymore and so I think it's just a good opportunity here it maybe kind of opens their eyes to hey that might be a great place to work someday a library. Right right it does serve as a recruitment tool it does give people from especially the small rural towns to see that there is an opportunity for employment locally even if they leave the community they may come back. It's also a boon for the economy that you have somebody who lives there or that comes back from school for the summer that is employed gainfully employed so that's also a plus. Yes definitely. Right and and I've seen that actually you know in terms of impact on the community I've seen that come through on the applications and it's that's definitely a plus something else that you might want to talk about is how was she was there over the summer an extra set of hands I mean that seems logical to me oh yes we really work them and they they don't sluff off and we when I write the grant I always think of the projects that need to be done during the summer and and I list those and so when they do come on board I just have to refer to back to that so the planning is in process and we kind of refer back to that throughout the summer and try to make sure that we get all of those tasks at least touched on at some point and so that makes it easy too and the other the assistant director also knows what those projects are so if I'm not here why we carry on great that's right everybody seems to be on board yes super and that is something I it's not a problem in our library but I do think you need to have the staff to be committed to this and that they're willing to work with that intern because obviously one person can't work with them all the time or see if they get their project started we have found that the students are capable of doing just about everything that we do I you know of course some of the administration tasks and the accounting and stuff I probably don't spend a lot of time with them on but they do touch on it and every year our students have come up with a project or maybe something that we need or they have an idea of something that we could change it might be how we display some of our items it might be like Sreese came up with the story walk or just different things that they would like to see us change or improve on and that input is I think terrific because you know it's what the customer needs or would like to see it's not what's best for us always right a fresh perspective some infusion of enthusiasm and new ideas yes definitely right and you know that's that's great for the staff too to be refreshed and especially if they've been working there for a while they it's a chance for them to renew their enthusiasm for the work because they see it through a fresh set of eyes yes right let's go back to Sreese and put you on the spot just for a second and there's no pressure for you to say yes but you are senior now in high school and you're going to be looking at your your educational opportunities and your career opportunities and did you have a chance to learn a little bit about schooling and library science or you know did you have a chance to kind of think about the different kinds of jobs that you could have working in a library yeah there's I don't know and again I put you on the spot so I really don't want to press you know give you any kind of pressure or anything to that effect but a lot of times when we have high school students then they go on and possibly while they're following whichever career path that they want or anything like that they might do a work study or work in their college library some of our students seem to have a connection then with working in a library and they consider that at least as part-time work some of them consider it as a as an actual viable career so just to be sneaky we tried to rope you in Sreese I think when I go to college I might help in the college library maybe if they will let me sure sure and we understand that people some people are just looking not just but people are looking for a summer job and they feel that they would enjoy working in a library and we also understand that some of our students are already on their career path and they're already on their educational path and they have their chosen field and we're excited for that one of the things that we do not to you necessarily Sreese but one of the things that we like to do is stress that people come to the world of library work and professional library work from all walks of life we have people who get their masters let's say in biological sciences and then they go back and get their masters in library science and they work in a college library in their field so there's a way you know we we try to plant seeds with the people who work in the libraries as an intern just to give them something maybe in the back the mind that someday they might be interested in in coming back to the library to work so all right Sreese thank you so much for your time what an impressive what a huge impression I think that you have made on your library and on your community you you worked you worked hard it seems to me that you really had a professional presence at your library and with your follow-up with the story walk that is so exciting congratulations on all the hard work that you did thank you and thanks Evelyn for your input of course we always appreciate hearing from you in terms of the process of applying for a grant all the way through what goes on during your internship all the way up to the reporting thanks again for your insight certainly glad to help sure okay okay um but you want to go to next let's see have we heard thank you again um we're going to go on and talk with if possible with um Mimi Smith from Skyler if if she has a microphone otherwise she was going to just maybe type in some comments and I was going to share those yep Mimi you're unmuted if you want to try and talk okay am I coming through perfectly yes good morning excellent good morning thank you and thank you so much for joining us sure um do you have any specific questions that you have for me or do you just want me to give you a little bit of an overview of um how process has worked for us the last few years right that yep how the process has worked for you any of your um big impressions and then also um what I like to stress uh with your project is that you don't typically hire in the summer you typically hire in the fall and I just kind of wanted to hear a little bit about why you might choose to do that and how that works for you and how you um do your recruiting um for applications okay well uh recruiting the main thing that we do is we um contact the counselor at the local high school and um ask them to spread the word that we have an internship um we've also mentioned it at city council meetings um I've contacted the librarian at the local high school and um asked her to put a bug in the ear of some of the students that she thought might be good candidates so um right we've gone a variety of different routes to um introduce the idea to people in the community and you have a variety of interns too you haven't always had high school students have you no ours have always been high school students they have okay yes just to stress they don't need to be um high school students in fact they don't need to be in school at all they could be um uh in between jobs or they could be we've had stay-at-home moms who decided to give it a shot and see if this was something that they might be interested in and actually it was a way for the library to kind of feel them out and see if this is a possible employment for them and that did work out for them so um we don't need to have traditional students we don't need to have uh college students who are in the library science program either but um a lot of our interns are high school students yes they are and um we actually have it on our library wordpress page we do have an internship application on there and information about the internship and how to apply so we have encouraged applicants to look at that and to apply online that gives me an idea also of what their skill level would be so that helps us out to know you know where they're coming from and then I'll touch a little bit on the question that you had for me about why we hire at a different time of the year um specifically last year um we had a or this past summer we had a new staff member and we also had a practicum student and so um I thought at that time it would be just best for us to do our internship after that um because we had enough things enough new people in the library at one time and um just do not want to have chaos reigning because of too many new people not being comfortable so um that was our main reason this past year can't tell you right off the top of my head why um why we have done it in the past summertime has just not um been the most feasible time for us in the past doesn't mean that it won't in the future but it's just worked out better for us for a variety of reasons right and and one reason why we have the application process so early in the year is because we didn't hear from people who were looking for summer employment for hiring for the summer that they wanted to be competitive with other hiring agencies or anybody else that might be hiring because they we used to have the application a little bit later in the winter early spring and by the time the library found out whether or not they got the award they kind of missed the boat in terms of recruiting any you know the the students that they were hoping to hire um but as you know here as Mimi has shared it does not need to be a summer employment in fact um it can be spread throughout the year this year things do need to wrap up by september typically it's through to the next march but because our federal grant is wrapping up um this year it does have to be it will have to be a summer and early fall um uh project did you want to talk a little bit about um any specific intern experience that you've had any um one you know story of impact that you would like to share Mimi well we've had um our students come in and do a variety of things for us we try to give them an overall view so we don't necessarily have specific big projects planned for them but some of the things that they've helped with that might not fall into our normal um every day processes and so on were um one year when we received all of our computers for the for the broadband grant um our interns helped set we had we had a good number of computers come in and so on and they helped unpack and set up and get organized and so on before we had the tech people come in and not really help um staff not to have to do that um so that they could take care of you know our patrons and so on um we also had one time where uh something happened with one of our databases actually it was a database that we have of of kids that have um permission to use the uh internet um we maintain that so that we can make sure that um you know we're complying with SIPA rules and all that and our database got corrupted some way and one of our interns rebuilt that for us she had to check records that she had to check permission slips and reline the um match up the data on the database because the lines had gotten um disorganized and so on so so that was quite a task uh she spent a lot of time doing that that year um we have oh and we're one of the libraries too that um sometimes split up our internship so we have two people rather than just one and that's what we're doing right now so we have two people working on their internship actually right now and they just started last week and so they are working different days of the week that way we have um for a month here we will have extra help for a whole month um and and that'll the nice thing about that is that sometimes helps us get caught up you know sometimes you can get really behind just because of things that happen and so we will have extra help here um every day for a month and that'll be nice i'll get to see everyday operations but we'll have extra hands to help us out um and one time in the past we had two interns and the thing that helped us out with them is that when we were taking them through orientation and some of the other things they were here on the same day and so we did not have to repeat ourselves in the whole process of orientation and training and so on that's a good hint there yeah well um what else can i tell you uh just you know if you've heard back from your interns or have they stuck around as volunteers have you kept in touch oh uh we have with some um and usually it's been like a one or two year thing and then of course they're off on you know their their roads to adulthood and their projects in life um but we have had uh some of them do some other work for us after their internship and it just based on it was based on on need here in the library at the time of what worked into their schedule and so on um so we had a staff change at one time and so we were in the um hiring process and really didn't have a good candidate for a while so one of our interns did come back and work for us for a while um and then he has since um joined the military so he's not around to help us out anymore but that was really nice having somebody that had already gone through you know a lot here and he could just step in absolutely yeah so we were really pleased about that and it looks like we might be doing that again here um we had a person that uh retired and then when somebody else left uh we kind of drug her back from retirement and so she's helped us out but we want to let her retire again so a previous yeah so a previous intern is probably going to come in and help us out again for a while um I know that she will have other things happening in her life down the road where she won't be able to stay with us for a long period of time but she's got the background that she can come in and help us out um you know temporarily and she will have good skills to take with her um along the way and and we've heard that on several locations and that's just absolutely wonderful that you you're able to plug them right in they've already had their orientation they're familiar with your library they're familiar with your other staff um just like saris saris was able to um pitch in and help just probably on maybe short notice too and so um for your interns to to uh become employed or be hired or work temporarily and that sort of thing that's that's just been um a great side benefit for these libraries especially in these smaller towns where you may not want to spend all that time orienting somebody who may not be around for very long and they're doing temporary work so congratulations Mimi on all of your um successful internships and we look forward to hearing about this year's with your two interns okay well we um are really appreciative of the funding to help us do that and it's a wonderful asset in the community and it's nice to know that the kids take skills with them wherever they end up and again um as you mentioned to saris uh you know she's got some background and that might really be helpful for some of these when they're um looking for financial aid through schools and so on where they give give them work study programs later on so right absolutely super well thanks Mimi thank you yeah we do have actually a comment from someone that relates to that Robin Quinn who's at our Hastings Memorial Library here in Nebraska typed it and said um just a thought even if interns don't become librarians they have insight experience and knowledge of libraries that will make them amazing advocates for us certainly I can definitely see Saris going out there and saying libraries are great I worked at one for a while you should totally go use it and then support it and yeah and that's one reason why many libraries hire teens because they are looking to refresh their team programming and hope to be uh eye candy or storefront uh I can't think of what that term is and it's okay to plug that to include that in your application process to say that you're looking for a younger face you're hoping that they may um show uh you know what to bring to bring the younger set into the library that's absolutely fine we've we've heard that time and time again and and they do hopefully take that with them as they grow into adulthood and um and go through their life path whatever that might be who knows they they could be advocates for a library they can sit in on a library board um they will take more maybe be more likely to take their own children to the library so absolutely we want them to be lifelong library users and advocates thanks for sharing that Robin okay um let's see here just wondering if Rose from La Vista is able to um yeah Rose from La Vista Public Library which does not have a microphone though um but I told her she can type in anything she wants to say and share it with us um I'm not sure how long it might take her to type in so I don't want to Rose I tell you what I'm going to go through the uh a quick PowerPoint presentation and if any of the internship supervisor or director she happens to be the director um care to weigh in on any part of the uh PowerPoint presentation this this would be a perfect way to do that why don't you type in your comments and I'm because I'm going to go through this pretty quickly well just just did you just take one thing which it sounds very successful because of their participation in last year um they already have another intern interested for this year right so so the buzz rolling thing it keeps coming back yeah right and that was a really neat program because they uh went with uh somebody from their teen advisory board and so I have a feeling I just wonder if it's somebody else that caught wind of the you know that was interested in it and and it would like to be the one chosen to do it this year so um that's one thing is that you can have a person in mind to um some some of some of these libraries actually um have kind of done a selection process not necessarily a hiring process they might want to do that formally but they have someone that they know that it would be interested in becoming an intern if they receive the grant said yes they talked to each other and the fact that the intern was paid was huge that helped a lot that there's actual money right how many of those unpaid internships that you hear it's a fact you get the experience but you also get the the the funding that's great well let's go through this um powerpoint presentation we have about 17 minutes left and I think that we'll be able to get through this and especially if we have any comments along the way or questions because I think we might have some potential applicants on the line today and we're really excited to have you here we don't want to overwhelm you with too much information but this powerpoint will be available as in addition to the recording of this so that you can go back and look through this as well as the actual internship grant page which I will visit last just an introduction here to the program and to recap some of the things that have already been covered today by our fabulous internship supervisors and our intern that joined us today we are talking about 20 Laura Bush 21st century library and grants that are funded through a grant federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to the Nebraska Library Commission and Nebraska Library Association is a big partner with us on this in the past they were able to secure outside funding from a private foundation and so they were able to help us match some some funding for our grants in the past few years and so we appreciate the partnership with NLA they send a couple of representatives that sit on the review panel they stay in touch with us and they help promote this program for us for all of us because it's it's of benefit to the NLA as much as it is to the commission and to the libraries that receive the grants so here here are the big points to know for this round for this cycle the deadline for applications is it's an online application and applications are due by February 18th 2014 this year by 4 59 p.m. we have to have a cutoff time somewhere so get your application started and entered and press submit by 4 59 p.m. central time on February 18th the award date the official award date is March 17th so libraries will know whether or not they've received a grant they will also find out in what amount some libraries ask for the full amount of one thousand dollars in the past some libraries have been awarded $500 or $750 some of them requested that and some of them were awarded that just based on our distribution of funds and what we were able to fund for libraries and those are I'll talk about stipends in a second the eligibility for the libraries those who may apply are accredited public libraries in Nebraska and we will talk about partnerships here in just a second and I know we're just as a related thing we are we just released new accreditation standards but just so though any accreditation level counts it doesn't have to be a certain one of the any accredited yeah any accredited level just want to make sure in case someone asks absolutely mm-hmm yep any any of the any of the accredited accreditation levels are are eligible and there is a website which we will visit in a moment not now hiring at your library dot Nebraska dot gov slash internships dot ASP so what are the goals of our grant our federal grant that interns become involved in real library work that they're introduced to the varied and exciting work that happens in libraries it's a recruitment tool you have a captive audience you can talk to them a little bit about your own personal reasons for working in the library you can talk to them about education opportunities talk to them about opportunities for employment in various kinds of libraries it's an enlightened view and an enlightened view for them they find out that there's so much more to library work than what they see that happens with shelving and checking in and out books that's what we hear time and time again and one of our other goals is that they find out what the role of technology in libraries is a lot of times that's also very insightful for them for the library it provides financial assistance to expand a program or complete a project and it also brings in fresh ideas so what what is this program and what does it do the grant awards are stipends you are awarded let's say you are awarded a thousand dollars you put in your request for payment and the check is written to your library for one thousand dollars how you choose to allot that in terms of payment to the intern it is for payments it is for salary only now by salary I mean that they could be a contract worker with the library and they are contracted to work so many hours and receive a thousand dollars sometimes that is a hundred hours but when you they can be paid hourly and then you need to discuss with your your city office you know how it's going to be done with taxes whether or not taxes are going to be taken out are they going to be hired as a temporary employee are they going to be hired as a contract worker in some of the smaller libraries getting paid ten dollars an hour it's a bit controversial for with other staff that are working there that have been working there for a long time and don't make ten dollars an hour so you can kind of think about that you could ask for seven hundred fifty dollars and ask for a hundred hours from your from your intern or you could ask for a thousand hours and have them or thousand dollars and ask them to work more than a hundred hours that's entirely up to you but again it's a stipend you receive you receive one check and it is for payment to the intern it does not cover supplies it does not cover mileage or anything to that effect so it's it's all the money unless their tax and unless taxes are withheld goes to the intern as Mimi mentioned you can hire more than one intern you can hire one intern you could ask for a thousand dollars and then mention that you would like to hire two interns something to that effect there is the introduction introduction to the world of library work so that they see what goes on on the front lines as well as behind the scenes you're expected to do an orientation to basic duties all the way from checking in books and out all the way through processing of books interlibrary loan maybe some administrative duties sitting in on a an a council meeting or a board meeting those sorts of things everything from even more than maybe in some ways than your current employees get to do they you know if especially if they work the desk most of the time and don't do processing of books or something to that effect we'd like for your intern to see the inner workings of the library from from the inside out a lot of times you might have a special project in mind or depending on the intern that you hire find out you know that they have some special skills and abilities that you would like to capitalize on and help them shine through with the special project it sounds to me like saris got to choose a couple of webinars to watch and she was inspired and that's how she came up with the story lock so that's another thing to do you can partner with other libraries we have had libraries that partnered with a with a community college library and so the the student split their time and were supervised also by by someone at the college library we also students can also do some of their hours in school library if it's done over the summer you know the school library may be closed so you might take that into account and then there's the evaluation this the intern does a baseline evaluation it's online basically just asking them what they what they think that they might be getting themselves into and then at the end they they do a follow-up survey and then the supervisor completes two surveys one about the intern and then one about the whole internship program what happened in 2013 we awarded 21 grants to 18 libraries and the total amount that we were able to award was the 20,250 they ranged we had one 500 dollar grant one 750 dollar grant and then some $1,000 grants uh we in in the larger cities in Lincoln and Omaha they have multiple branches so they are eligible to apply for multiple to for multiple grants um what we like to see is a wide variety of libraries that apply we had big libraries we had small libraries we have libraries in the east we have libraries in the west so we really encourage libraries from across the state we're looking for a variety of libraries to apply what happened uh with the specific projects one of them uh very common is if you hire for summer reading you ask them to hire with uh to conduct assist with summer reading programming a lot of times they set up their own modules they plan them from beginning to end uh sometimes they plan the end of the summer party those sorts of things and there's also because if you bring in younger interns they might have some insight into what they would what you might hear from them about what might go into the juvenile and young adult collections um one one student went around and solicited donations for the summer reading program into the uh prizes and then um somebody else organized and implemented the youth book discussion group and down here you can see um one of the supervisors um feedback and we'll talk about uh the interns perspective and the supervisors perspective in just a moment but here you can see it's such a bonus to have an intern to be able to stretch our staff to create new projects the addition of these short films which we'll learn about in a second on our website increased our visibility online and patrons enjoyed seeing their kids featured in the film again we talked about the students learning about the role of technology in the libraries and of course perhaps they have some skills that haven't um been made that staff may not be aware of yet um so here we had the completed videos an instructional video um prepared pictures we've had students start library facebook pages do web page design um add things to the website and um create public relation materials on the computer such as flyers and newsletters so here's the video project that I wanted to talk to you about this intern um produced promotional videos about the summer reading program and so they learned how to use new equipment and they learned how to use new computer programming to produce their uh footage and so on the right side you see what the supervisor had to say um about this and so it was a new project for them um it sounds to me like perhaps the staff learned right along with the intern so it's a way to um to stretch your to your vision to um you know think outside the box as they say um and learn some new things and it might be a nice way for the staff to feel a bit more adventurous because they are learning right alongside somebody else and here are what some of the interns have to say I learned about the broad variety of goals um there's a lot more to work more work than most people realize and what different kinds of skills you need to have science math and business um there was somebody who said they haven't decided on a career but they would definitely put being a librarian on their list and um here's someone that said I learned librarians need to have very extensive knowledge regarding the operation of computers so technology um really did come to the forefront in that person's internship Beatrice Public Library got coverage in their local newspaper so we do encourage uh the libraries to send out a press release or to inform their local newspaper that they've hired an intern and especially if they have some specific projects that they're working on here's Sarice she brought County Public Library posted on their own Facebook page a picture of Sarice um visiting the Norfolk Public Library and I won't go into too great of detail about the eligibility and expectations because you can read that on the rather lengthy informational page about the the internship um grant program which I do encourage you to read from very beginning to very end um but they submit the application online they complete the internship this year before September 30th they assign a supervisor and they give credit to IMLS NLC and NLA and all their publicity about the project um you don't really see the application until you actually get into it um so if you open up the application and you want to see the questions and then you want to type them into Word and work on them for a while then you can copy your your narrative from Word and and you know make sure you've done your spell check and everything and then you can paste it back into the boxes in the online application that's fine these are the questions that you're going to be asked what is the background what is your reason for participation you know are you are you looking for fresh eyes do you want to give gainful employment to somebody who's local especially if you're in a small town what is your underlying need or opportunity that could be several different things perhaps there's a specific project that you would like to complete perhaps you would like to have an extra set of hands to get through summer reading program perhaps you would like this if it's a high school student you would like for them to have some visibility in the community there are lots of different reasons so I don't want to pigeonhole you you know I don't want to pigeonhole you into giving the right answer because there are lots of different reasons we do ask for a schedule of activities we want to know that you've thought this through um if you've had some specific projects or you can say depending on the intern that you choose and and then we want to know later on you know sort of who you hired and what you are going to work on what the student's role is going to be a general orientation plan we do want to know that you are orienting them into all aspects of library work and then a timeline if you have a general idea for summer and then also you know you could give a specific timeline week one do these sorts of things and you're not held you don't need to be held fast to that but we do want to know that some thought has been put into this um there is a a resource out there called mass blast and it's online and there's a link from the internship orientate the internship page that you can go and get some examples of orientation schedules so look for that and then what is the effect what are the anticipated benefits to your student to your library and to your community those are the three main questions um you do have to have um the the director of your board your president of your board sign off on this is an electronic signature but they do need to be on board with this um what's going to happen after you submit your application preference will be given to proposals that include your schedule of activities your orientation that demonstrate that you will have an orientation to all library service functions and that you have a commitment to meeting grant expectations we like to hear that you're you know that you're going to do your evaluations we like to hear that you are you know that you've looked at the goals and reasons for us having this brand that you would like to help further our expectations for on our end and what's encouraged we would love to hear that you have a partnership or even just to hear that you might make a visit to a larger library or an academic library or something to that effect and we do encourage first-time applicants we would love to have some some new blood we've we've got some that we have some libraries that have received an internship grant almost every year and we love it because they they have developed their program but we also want to give new applicants a chance to give this a try speaking of application review if you would like for a staff member of the Nebraska Library Commission to review your application before you submit it they could provide you with some feedback about some areas where them some things might be fuzzy or maybe misunderstood or you know ask you to beef up one part to be more explicit in terms of one section of the application so if you want to fill out complete the application narrative and submit it to me I will pass it on to the independent reviewer who's not sitting in on the panel and they will give you specific feedback on your responses to the questions and just just to make sure that your vision you know what find out what your vision is and to see if that's lining up with the sorts of questions that are being asked on the application I've done that for it and it's nice to have another set of eyes on your application who is not involved in what you created so they don't have any sort of already preconceived notions about it and I'm also not involved in like as Kathy said the decision making process so nothing from them has any but I just look at it as an outside completely not knowing a thing does this seem to be doing what it needs to do to be you know evaluated right correctly right we provided Krista with the goals and expectations of our federal grant and then what we outlined to you the applicant as the our goals and expectations and then she looked at looked at the responses and tried to see if they meshed so and it was a strong how many did you do one two it was a strong application I remember at least the one that I do recall it was a strong application and was funded so here I am I'm Catherine I am the grant manager grant program manager I'm available by email or on the phone and I would love to hear from you you know just any questions that you have about the program about the application process just anything to that effect I'm here to help and again I do highly encourage first time applicants or if you did apply in the past and we're not funded I highly encourage you to submit to me your ideas or your narrative sections and we will get those reviewed with some feedback some constructive feedback to you while you're doing your top rose did did comment and say they she will be submitting a grant for the upcoming year as she said they had someone interested they're partnering with an organization called project search which she says has she says helped students in special needs I looked up the website and what it is is they're an organization that started in Cincinnati where they help their primary objective is to secure competitive employment people with disabilities develop developmental disabilities so and they're actually from their website they're having their annual conference is going to be in Omaha this July exciting so maybe something is going on I assume that might be related to why you're maybe doing that but yeah partnering with the local of course this is partnership with the library but also if you have a specific project like that and you want to partner with an organization absolutely no question would letters of support be encouraged if you're wanting to partner with an organization is that something that could be I think I don't know that they're not required it's possible in the narrative just to say that you have you have an understanding with the organization and you have their full backing something to that effect just to know that you've communicated with them and they have endorsed your project that's what we'd like to hear yeah absolutely so here I have pulled up now hiring at your library dot Nebraska dot gov or got any dot gov and over here on the left is internships click on that to go to the internships page this is the brief the click and dirty information that you need to know read it carefully and then down here application process if you wish to apply please read first before you apply and it's lengthy there's the print version you can print it out so you don't need to look at the screen and maybe there are things you want to highlight this should give you everything hopefully that you need to complete your application or to think about what kind of internship you would like to have even before you think about completing it here's the mass blast design an internship wiki page oh they didn't take it down tell me they didn't take it down it's been there forever I think they took it down oh my goodness I'm so sad to hear that if I can find if I can find it I will update the URL I'm glad that I checked that I hadn't heard from any applicants that that was a problem but I can also I tell you what I'll do I will post a couple of example orientations that have been submitted by other libraries okay I will do that because a lot of them use the mass blast to as their example right golly gee that was a huge project I'm sorry to see it might be gone I will search a little bit more but I have a feeling it's not there so award information eligibility application review and award administration and down here is the special special link there it is general information the application is to be completed online by 459 on February 18th 2014 and then you receive after you submit the person the director will receive a an email stating that this has been submitted and it does have all of the responses that were on there but this is what the application looks like and if you want to go in and take a peek at it that's fine you don't have to push submit or anything like that you have to sign your life away and the library director signs off on it and the library board president signs off on it as well so in the past I do want to say that we have allowed the funding to go to the foundation instead or the friends of the library that's not the typical way to do it typically it goes to the library through the city we send the check to the library and it's processed that way but if that's going to be it's going to be an issue for you to go through your city but you have the backing of your foundation or something put that in in the application or contact me in advance so that we can discuss this and figure out how you're going to how you're going to communicate this in your application so there's no confusion right which means call me send me an email let's avoid confusion let's have a great application process let's you know get you energized about having an internship and figure out a way for you to communicate what your vision is to us to the great review panel any questions um does anybody have any questions or comments or anything type them into the questions section of your interface um or rose if you have anything else to add about what you guys have been doing or will be doing in la vista um or if Mimi or uh everyone have any more i'm just scrolling down so you can see what what this all says okay all right rose does say she's swimming at lindsay um lindsay who's their teen um teen library board coordinator she says she's swimming lindsay will also be submitting an application of one of her teens as well so they may be more than one application coming okay we can award we can award one grant per library okay so one library can ask for up to one thousand dollars if you choose to hire two interns out of that that's fine um but we cannot receive two grants two grant applications from the same library unless they're multi-branch so basically the only ones that are eligible to ask for more than one thousand dollars or multiple grants is omaha and lincoln she says okay thanks sure between the two of you you're both trying to do is lindsay's trying to do something and you're doing something project search get together and decide how you might give you up a full thousand right you could hire two interns absolutely they would just still be one application that mentions both projects in it right they could do that and the maximum that one library can ask for is a thousand dollars unless they're unless they're multi-branch so there we go and there was um there was on one application last year a request for funding for materials and again the stipend is funding for salary and if you have to you know set aside for taxes but it's to go to the intern and there is no money for materials or mileage or anything like that so you might need to get creative um but and and perhaps this is an opportunity for you to go to your friends or your foundation and say i have hired it we're hiring an intern we've got this grant or we're thinking about buying for this grant and we would love for you to come up with a hundred dollars fifty dollars or whatever for this specific project it might get them really excited about that so that's another opportunity for you to do that and if you do that in advance and you get some sign off from your foundation or your friends and they say yes to go for it mention that in your grant application mention that you have them on board that they're totally in on it with you the grant review panel will be very happy to hear that okay i don't want to keep anyone any longer i could go on and on especially about the rewards of having an intern and the rewards for the intern and the library in the community oh we did have a question come in but it sounds like it was at the same time as you're talking about it from robin again at hastings memorial i know the grant doesn't require matching funds because is it allowable to have additional outside funds to go towards the internship and that's sounds great to me yep just the internship money is just for salary related to salary for the person but then if you do need extra money for other stuff absolutely go out and get it and use the internship as a as a push to the other people saying we're going to have this money will you give us this money to make it work and it can happen or if there's an outside organization that wants to contribute another five hundred dollars to make it a fifteen hundred dollar internship for for somebody that's absolutely other money could also pay except for two it doesn't have to just be for the extra materials or supplies or whatever right yeah exactly hope that answered your question robin i have a feeling she's gonna say yes or not let's see yes she says thanks she says yes she says thanks perfect okay so um contact me take take a really good look at this page from beginning to end take a really good look at the application process page it's lengthy go up go to the pdf print it out i will add links to i will post some example orientations for you although so that you can see what those might be and i'll do them in words so that i'll do word and pdf so that you don't have to type from scratch because go ahead lift somebody else's go for it i say that's what people did from the mass blast wiki i'm just sad to see that's going probably can try and search out figure out what happened to it to get moved somewhere or what yeah okay okay and the deadline is uh in february so you got time here we're 18 yeah plenty of time plenty of time to to find your supervisor to figure out who your supervisor is going to be to um feel out whether there might be somebody that you might be interested in hiring you know kind of you can feel that out in advance um we actually had somebody who contacted me that somehow learned about the internships and said i would love to have an internship this summer can you tell me um about that and she went to a library and said i'd love to work at your library this summer and they said okay we'll apply for an internship break and they did and they hired her they said i match me up find me at is there a library i can do that's right and so somebody might come to you that's right or maybe you have a couple of volunteers that you think might make good interns so you could talk to them ahead of time you can't promise them anything but you could definitely talk to them ahead of time say we'll try it we'll apply and see what happens yeah right all right doesn't look like any urgent questions or comments come in so i think that's great we have some great info and insight from the people who've done this before um so get out there and apply so that will wrap it up today thank you um Catherine and Evelyn and Mimi and Rose and Cerise so you remember all the names um so that will wrap it for this mornings um uh and come us live it has been recorded so it'll be available later this afternoon for you to watch again or to share with colleagues as will the PowerPoint yep PowerPoint 2 it'll be up there and any links mentioned i've got the link to the internship program um and any libraries that mention i'll link to their websites too if you want to go and check out those libraries you've been participating in the program um all that information will be there as well so that will wrap it up for today but i hope you join us next week when our topic is hot titles for a cold month um where we've got some commission staff here um Deborah Draco's Michael Sowers and Laura Johnson have gotten together i'm going to give you some um book recommendations um for things you add to your collection um both fiction and nonfiction so um tune in with us uh sign up for that for next week and you can see what new books and titles you might want to get for your library um and come us live is also on facebook so if you are a big facebook user please go right ahead and like us there you'll get notifications of when we have new sessions coming up when recording is available um i always remind everyone that you can see here each Wednesday morning that sessions about ready to start so pop over there and log in on the date with us on our facebook page if you are so inclined and and um let me plug Nebraska librarians learning together oh yeah there it is there's ours um join this community there's an update almost daily and if you scroll down um you can see here that we had some scholarship students who graduated and so we posted their photos so there is um Monica tidiman she just got her bachelor's and then if you scroll down a little bit more there's Libby Munsell she she got her bachelor's and so we were able to celebrate along with them and you can help celebrate right along with us and weigh in on with your opinions on some of these posts we'd love to hear from you get connected with our future library we did we did have one intern post on our wall talking about what a great time they had and you know thanking and the basketball library commission for providing a grant to their library so they did weigh in that was great great all right all right that will wrap it up for this morning then thank you very much and we'll see you um next time and then go to sleep bye